Uhh, things were looking up with the last episode, but I’m afraid that this one brought down my enthusiasm again. At least it’s over now. I can’t say that I really regret blogging this, but I don’t think I need to see any more episodes of Makai Ouji, regardless of how fabulous Sytry is.

Solomon’s life looked more interesting than pretty much anything else we’ve seen from the anime, sadly. Who knows if using demons for company was his true intentions for summoning them, but he seems to have been bored and lonely. I assume all of the books was where he learned how to do this. Who even knows when the whole ~god blessing him with unlimited wisdom~ thing happened. Maybe it was from birth. In any case, his life didn’t start out as fabulous as the other flashbacks maybe made it seem. I would have loved to have seen how Solomon handled the other demons (like did he just say “Okay, you’re joining my harem now.” like he did with Dantalion?), but oh well. We had an episode about Solomon/William floating in place and shooting beams from his hands while everyone watched in shock and amazement. …You’d think Baalberith would have learned after he lost against Solomon the first 2 times, without once changing his strategy, but I guess not.

We haven’t seen much of the guy at all, but I’d just like to comment on Lucifer’s character design. Or I guess, the fact that the only thing we really know about the guy is that he has feathers and a hand. Since he was originally cast out of heaven, I suppose it makes sense that he’d have the same wings that Michael has, but I really liked the fact that his design seems to be a lot like an angel’s. Especially since I was expecting something closer to a somewhat creepy ossan like Baalberith. Or even looking at Beelzebub and Dantalion, they all have somewhat more demonic qualities. Maybe Lucifer has pointed ears or horns or something too, but the wings (and the amount of feathers they shed) were really interesting for me. Now if only we knew what Michael’s deal with him is. Knowing how this show likes to take it’s own er, …liberties with things (should I even bother mentioning that the teapot wasn’t invented until about the 1200’s?), I’m sure there’s a deeper reason than what we know from the bible. Though him awakening now seems like a “lol, you’ve all been fighting for nothing” ending. Even Michael has decided to back off for some inexplicable reason, when his whole reason for existing seems to be to get revenge or whatever on his brother.

MAGICAL HAND HOLDING.

…Have I mentioned that I don’t like Chiaki Kon? Because I definitely should have by now. I’ll save you the rant I had the last episode, but really, the only reason I enjoyed this anime at all was because of the source material. …I’ll admit that Kon is pretty good at taking the source material and coming up with anime-only scenarios that don’t seem out of place. However, she also has a rather bad habit of completely ditching half of the plot for whatever reason and then favouring pretty much everything else over character development. That’s definitely what happened here.

This episode (other than Lucifer being the one to tell Solomon to knock it off and the flashbacks of Solomon’s life) was pretty much all made up and just riding on the plot that the anime had set up before. I’m sad that William never matured like he did quite a bit in the manga, and that the sub plot about heaven’s politics was taken out (basically the angels that used to be human trying to take over Michael’s place, since they’re kind of looked down on and manipulating the demons to weaken Michael). But hey, for an episode about Baalberith killing the same group of demons 5 times (lol recycled animation), it was alright. I’m not entirely sure why the demons all just kind of abandoned William at the end of the episode, but having Dantalion come back at the end was a nice touch.

…If you’re wondering, the plot went on as normal after this event in the manga. It’s not like Lucifer being awake negates the fact that he needs to rest sometime soon.

Uhh, what can I say? This was okay, but I’m glad I didn’t get to the manga until these last few episodes, or else that would have ruined the anime for me. Things were okay, but they were certainly pretty bad in comparison to the original. This last episode just kind of seemed like a joke, considering all of the recycled animation they used. And yet, this is the most bearable we’ve ever seen William. …Though to be fair, he only truly appeared in the last 5 minutes or so. This ending seems okay for the anime, but it’s kind of frustrating how nothing was really concluded. Who even knows why Michael gave up or why Kevin’s character was suddenly ignored. Like I said above, this all seemed like a huge waste of effort on everyone’s part, if they’re going to end it like that. Oh well, overall, Makai Ouji had it’s entertaining parts, and other than the rather obvious things this episode (I guess the budget ran out here), things were usually pretty good quality-wise. The OP and ED songs were pretty catchy. I don’t think I really want to watch another season of this (or at least, not with the same director), but I hope at least some of the people went to the manga because of the anime.

6 Responses to “Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist – 12 [END]”

Give Chiaki Kon some slack, she did a wonderful job at animating my gay porn yaoi. Though I’m not so sure about the whole character development thing since I only like her anime where it’s exactly the same like the manga… Like SIH /squeal/ Maybe she has tendency to screw things up when it comes to anime-only scenario? She should totally animate more yaoi though.

But yeah, I have to agree with the crapiness of this show, except the character growth since I don’t read the manga and I don’t expect characters to have huge character development in 12 episodes. There are so many holes in the story of this series. Like… Why is Lucifer awake again? Just to tell Solomon to stop? If that’s the case, he’s lazier than me. Also, what’s up with the relationship between Solomon and Lucifer? It seems that Solomon loves Lucifer more than Dantalion. Solomon aside, I’m annoyed at how Keving is shifted from a major minor character to a character with little meaning. I mean, there were episodes wasted on the guy, and the amount is not little. So what the hell?

I still haven’t watched her yaoi. I can forgive Higurashi. Umineko was apparently ruined beyond belief (I still need to get around to playing the games, but I admit that the anime was kind of meh). Don’t even talk to me about Arcana Famiglia. Oh, anaaga, if only you knew!! There was way more adorable BL moments in the manga of this that Kon cut out.

The character growth here… well, there wasn’t any. William was supposed to learn magic and attempt to gain power so nobody could push him around instead of running around playing the uselessly loud damsel in distress all the time. Dantalion was supposed to have been not such an M from the beginning (thinking Issac weird for putting up with William’s verbal abuse), and then slowly accepting William for who he was. …There was still kind of a jump there between the two stages of the relationship, but still. There was also a continuity in the series. So every time they all ditched William, even after something life-threatening just happened, they’d have a reason for it instead of everyone going “we’re all leaving now, kbye”. OTL

Actually, the whole Lucifer/Solomon thing still hasn’t been explained from where I am in the manga. But there’s a rather complicated heaven/hell war thing going on as well (plus William is having problems with some shady ossan teaching him and Issac magic), so they don’t really have time to stop and ask questions.

Well, I had a feeling it would sort of end like this. Things were getting messy and off-kilter when I dropped the show and I felt it was a little late to rejuvenate it. That one shot of reused footage looked horrible.

Well, at least this show had a good OP. I play that song in my car sometimes. It, unlike this show, is cute and catchy.

Ahaha you did predict Lucifer coming out of nowhere at the end, a few episodes back. …I don’t even know what to think about this series. I love the manga so far, but the anime… well, the only thing that the anime has done for me is help me realize how much I dislike this director.